Newsletter Archives

In this edition:
Creating Disk Quotas for Users
Precise Word Tables
To Restart or Not?

It's time for another edition of our tips and trick where we present you with a few helpful bits of information which we hope makes your everyday computing tasks just a little bit quicker & easier.

Creating Disk Quotas for Users

If you'd like to limit how much disk space each person can use, you can use XP's disk quota feature which allows you to monitor and limit your drive's disk space.

First off, the drive must be have been formatted in NTFS format (rather than FAT32 or anything else).

Right-click on the drive in Windows Explorer (Start > All Programs > Accessories), then select Properties and then the Quota tab.

From there, tick the checkbox labeled "Enable quota management" and then the "Deny disk space to users exceeding their limit" if you don't want anyone to be able to continue saving files when they've exceed the limit you set.

Click Apply to have Windows calculate the disk and log space each user currently uses. (This can obviously take a while...)

After that, click the Quota Entries button and then double click the user who you wish to set a quota for. Select the "Limit disk space to" radio button and then set the limit.

Click OK to put the limit in place. Of course, you can always change the limit by following the above step or disable quote limiting by de-selecting the "Enable quota management" checkbox.

Precise Word Tables
Working with tables in Word can be a powerful but frustrating way to present information. You can often spend significant time trying to get table just right.

If you need columns to have specific measurements, hold down the Alt key while dragging the gray blocks in the ruler. (View > Ruler)

As the blocks are dragged, you'll see precise measurements of the distances between cells.

To Restart or Not?
You may not know it, but Windows is set to automatically restart when there's a fatal system error.

This may sound like a good idea but if it happens while you've stepped away for a cup of coffee, you'll have no idea what error messages were displayed so you're unlikely going to be able to fix the problem.

You can disable Windows from automatically restarting by right-clicking on My Computer in Windows Explorer, selecting Properties and then the Advanced tab in the Startup and Recovery section.

Within there, click the Settings button and then uncheck the box that says "Automatically restart."

With this done, the system will now only shutdown rather than restart until you turn it back on. This may allow you more time to see more of what's going on and fix the problem faster.

That's it for this month. We hope you find these tips useful and if you did, please share them!